You spend the weeks leading up to the holidays hanging decor and putting the finishing touches on your festivities. When the new year arrives, it’s time to put everything back in order, but it can seem overwhelming to keep a well-organized home.
However, doing so is well worth the effort for your psychological health. Research shows that getting organized can ease anxiety and depression by removing the neverending to-do list your brain perceives when you come home to clutter.
Plus, life is less stressful when you don’t waste precious minutes searching for a pen — or your child’s homework assignment. Are you ready to take charge? Here are nine home organization resolutions to set for the new year.
1. Keep Your Entryway Clear
When you get home after a long day of work or errands, you should feel relieved. A cluttered entryway, however, can ruin that feeling instantly.
Feng shui practitioners consider your front door “the mouth of chi,” and blocking it can prevent positive energy from flowing into your home. As a result, you feel tired and listless as you lose interest in previously fun activities. Think about it: Did your shoulders immediately slump as you uttered a defeated sigh the last time you came home from a rough day, only to encounter a mess?
2. Make Cleaning a Habit
Cleaning can feel like an impossible task when all of your chores pile up. Instead of leaving all of your work for one day, spread your tasks out throughout the week to make the cleaning process more manageable.
You can make a schedule for yourself, like vacuuming on Mondays, dusting on Tuesdays, laundry on Wednesdays, and so on. Or, you can try cleaning in 30-minute bursts each day – set a timer when you get home for and do anything you can in 30 minutes. Not only will this help keep your home organized, it can also contribute to your daily dose of exercise, as cleaning is a form of non-exercise activity thermogenesis that can burn calories.
3. Go Color-Code Crazy
However, there’s one small problem if you have toddlers — most of them can’t yet read. How can you teach them to pick up their toys? Think about how tots love putting brightly colored shapes in the right slot in many toys, and you have your answer. Use color-coded cubbies and make cleaning their room into a game. This trick will come in handy later when they have to file their homework away in the right binder — use various hues to represent different subjects.
4. Work Your Hangers
Do you fall into the “stuff it in the closet, quick,” trap, tidying your home by hiding the mess in a pile behind a closed door?
One technique is to reverse your hanger direction at the beginning of the year. When you wear an item, turn the hanger the other way. When the end of the year arrives, sell or donate anything that’s still hanging the wrong direction.
Look up if you have a lot of stuff. Many closets have plenty of open space above the rods — can you install some shelves for items like shoes and hats that you don’t wear every day?
5. Invest in Pantry Organizers
Your pantry can quickly grow chaotic. Tidy it up by investing in clear glass containers. They look elegant, you can see what’s inside and the seal prevents pests. A proper bin makes that stash of bags nearly everyone keeps in their home disappear while keeping them handy for scooping litter and lining trash cans.
6. Write a Chore Schedule
You’ve decided it’s time to tackle the mess. You start by gathering the laundry, but while you do that, you notice how dusty your bedroom ceiling fan is. Distracted by that chore, you get out the ladder and duster, only to get sidetracked by the juice stain your 3-year-old left on the white rug. Before you know it, you have three unfinished chores.
Your solution? Make a schedule and stick to it, refusing to move on to a new task until you finish the one at hand.
7. Give Paper the “Two F” Test
Paper can be an organizational nightmare. You want to toss that old bill, but what if you need it someday?
Give paperwork the “2F” test. What’s that? If you can’t file it or frame it — like a diploma — toss it.
8. Get Your Cords Under Control
Today’s connected world means cords everywhere. Leaving them plugged into outlets drains energy, but how else can you find them when you need them?
Use a screw and nut organizer and your handy label maker to stow those chargers you don’t need all the time. Get creative with clips and Command hooks for those you must let dangle.
9. Love Your Label Maker
You’ve scoured every junk drawer for a spare AA battery with some juice. You finally find a fresh pack after 15 minutes — in the first place you searched. How could you miss it when it was staring you right in the face?
Here’s the deal. Losing things — especially when you’re in a hurry — causes a spike in the stress hormone cortisol. Too much cortisol causes a negativity bias that clouds your judgment. You hurriedly think, “Of course they aren’t there,” and move on to the next frantic search spot, unaware that the item you needed was right under your nose.
It’s pretty tough to overcome biology. However, you can tame it with labels. Go nuts, applying them to the inside of drawers and the lids of closed boxes in bright hues so that your eyes can’t miss what’s in front of them.
Home Organization Resolutions to Set for the New Year
Make 2023 the year you finally achieve the organized home you’ve always wanted. Not only will it make your house look like a magazine spread, but it will reduce your stress and make your life easier.
By setting these home organization resolutions for the new year, you’ll improve your outlook and feel like the master of your domain.
Cora’s passion is to inspire others to live a happy, healthful, and mindful life through her words on Revivalist – wholeheartedly convincing them that everyday moments are worth celebrating. Cora has spent 5+ years writing for numerous lifestyle sites – hence her sincere love for both life and the beauty of style in all things. Keep up with Cora on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook.
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